The Cincinnati Bengals and head coach Zac Taylor had a chance to steal an early-season divisional win on the last drive against the Pittsburgh Steelers, but one of Taylor's biggest issues as a head coach nearly killed the drive before it began.
After the struggling special teams unit managed to field the kickoff and set the Bengals up with two timeouts and plenty of time, Taylor couldn't get the offense in order efficiently, and the Bengals had to burn one of their two precious timeouts before the drive even started.
Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow could be seen frustrated and yelling as he knew a difficult job had just become even more difficult. The fact that basic operations like substitutions and getting the play in are occurring at this point in Taylor's tenure is frustrating, but having those things occur after a kickoff is egregious.
Zac Taylor took full responsibility for the time-management blunder
In the press conference following the 30-27 loss to the Steelers, Taylor admitted that the burnt timeout to start the crucial final drive was on him. In this article from Local 12, Taylor said that discussion regarding the issue was not necessary.
“It was just my fault,” he said. “There’s no conversation that I need to have with somebody else when I make mistakes. So that was my fault.”
Two reasons could be responsible for the operations mishap. Either Taylor didn't get the play call in on time, or a late substitution gaffe allowed the Steelers to substitute slowly and drain the play clock. It looked like the latter, but without knowing what's happening on the sidelines, it's hard to tell for sure.
Regardless of what led to the unnecessary burnt timeout, neither should happen on a team led by the NFL's fifth-longest-tenured head coach at all. This is especially true following a kickoff, when the entire stadium had plenty of heads-up about the incoming possession.
There is no reason to believe Zac Taylor's game-management abilities will improve, so delegation may be in order
On Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase's Chasing No 1 podcast, Burrow hinted that getting play calls in late was something that bugged him.
"If the play call is in eight seconds too late, now everybody is rushing to the line of scrimmage; now we just have to run the play, and I can't get any of my indicators that I wanted," said Burrow. "Personnel gets in a little too late, and sometimes you still call two plays at the line of scrimmage, but you don't have enough time to see if the blitz is coming this way, and then you end up running a bad play."
Despite there being only one team in the NFL with fewer penalties than the Bengals in 2025, making them one of the most disciplined teams in the NFL, they led the league in delay-of-game penalties. According to NFLPenalties.com, the Cleveland Browns were the only other team with 11 delay of game penalties in 2025. This statistic doesn't account for the number of crucial timeouts burned by Taylor.
Of the nine teams in the NFL that had 7 or more delay-of-game penalties in 2025, there is only one head coach who held on to play-calling duties. Five teams brought in new head coaches, and of the four teams that didn't, two of them shifted play-calling duties to their offensive coordinator.
After a storied career as one of the best playcallers in the NFL, Denver Broncos head coach Sean Peyton realized it would benefit the team if he delegated playcalling. Taylor's resume as a playcaller doesn't sniff Peyton's, as there are maybe a handful of coach's in the NFL who do, but he has yet to come to this realization.
Despite a few years of struggles, Taylor's strong suit as a head coach still lies in his ability to promote a winning culture. He took a team with one of the longest playoff-win droughts in the NFL to a Super Bowl appearance, shifting the culture of a perennially struggling organization into a contending organization in just a couple of years.
If Taylor could delegate playcalling and focus on regaining that winning culture, the Bengals could see significantly more success from a culture standpoint, and from an on-field operations standpoint. The difference between a couple poorly-burned timeouts and a few more delay of game penalties can be the difference between making the playoffs and taking a trip to Cancun. As proven in the past, a foot in the door is all the Bengals need in order to make a run.
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